Central Banks, Governments Are ‘Way Behind the Curve’ in Regulating Cryptocurrencies – Regulation Bitcoin News

Harvard Professor of Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kenneth Rogoff says central banks and governments are “way behind the curve” in regulating cryptocurrencies. He added that officials throw out the idea of having central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) “to distract the conversation.”

Harvard’s Professor on Cryptocurrency Regulation

In an interview with Bloomberg Monday, Kenneth Rogoff, an American economist discussed cryptocurrency regulation (CBDCs), and the central banks’ digital currencies. Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor in Public Policy at Harvard University and an economist is a professor of Economics. He also served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2001–2003.

Professor at Harvard described the following:

In regulating cryptocurrency, central banks, as well as governments, are often way behind. The idea of CBDCs is floated to interrupt the conversation.

Commenting on the U.S. issuing a digital dollar, he opined: “At the moment, if you think about the United States issuing a CBDC, you have to ask why they’re doing it. Because we can accomplish a lot of things the same way in the current system by making tweaks.”

The economic professor explained that if the Federal Reserve “did it too well,” and there is a “retail central bank digital currency,” then “There’d be massive disintermediation that we’re probably not ready to handle,” he warned.

Professor Rogoff continued: “I think there are small central banks that want to issue a CBDC hoping they’ll get some of the kind of business that crypto gets.”

When asked why central banks and governments are delaying regulating cryptocurrencies, Rogoff replied: “I think it feels like the 1990s and early 2000s to me when the financial system was inventing all these clever new financial engineering devices and saying … ‘catch me if you can,’ ‘regulate me if you can.’”

He said:

The young crypto pioneers are very similar to me, and I have heard many of their ideas. But they are wrong that they can’t be regulated.

Rogoff is a long-time bitcoin skeptic. Rogoff warned previously that central banks and governments will not allow bitcoin to become mainstream. He stated that the cryptocurrency would be more valuable at $100K in 2018 than it was at $100K 10 years later. “Basically, if you take away the possibility of money laundering and tax evasion, its actual uses as a transaction vehicle are very small,” the former IMF chief economist opined.

Let us know what you think of the Harvard Professor Rogoff’s comments. Please leave your comments below.

Kevin Helms

Kevin, a student of Austrian Economics and evangelist since 2011, discovered Bitcoin. He is interested in Bitcoin security and open-source software, network effects, and the intersection of cryptography and economics.